


Manumission

by AirgiodSLV



Series: Possession [2]
Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-10-26
Updated: 2005-10-10
Packaged: 2019-07-20 09:37:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16134581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: The last thing Elijah wanted was for Orlando to come to him. Orlando was everything that Elijah had left behind; fire and warmth and spirit, and the seductive thrill of humanity in all its imperfection. Orlando was mortal, in a way that heated the stolen blood in Elijah’s veins when he thought of it.





	1. Strigoi

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to [Possession](http://www.airgiodslv.dombillijah.com/stories/possession.html). For Brenna, on her birthday, because she has waited a whole year for this. Thanks to [](https://msilverstar.livejournal.com/profile)[msilverstar](https://msilverstar.livejournal.com/) and [](https://impasto.livejournal.com/profile)[impasto](https://impasto.livejournal.com/) for the spectacular beta.
> 
> Content/Warnings: Vampiric AU, with everything that implies. Violence and death.

_Part One - Elijah_

 

On the first night that the moon rose red, stained with dying light from the sun, Elijah knew there was something wrong. He watched the stars for hours, glowing cold and remote the way only the sky could be. Or a vampire.

The second and third nights he spent away from the mansion he shared with Dominic, in a marble mausoleum he had claimed for meditation. He found it comforting, sometimes, to be in the company of the dead. It made him feel less alone.

On the fourth night, he returned to find that he had received a letter from Viggo.

_‘It’s happened again.’_

There was more, in brief, but Elijah needed only those words to remember Orlando’s body pressed against his in that long-ago bedroom, the vulnerability in his eyes. _She drained me,_ he had said, with his eyes dark and full of fire. And then, with Elijah’s teeth only inches from his throat; _Vig won’t allow it to happen again._

Only it had. And now Orlando was missing.

From the letter, Viggo left no doubt that he expected Orlando to run to Elijah. _‘He needs to be away for awhile,’_ the note said, scrawled in Viggo’s antique, measured handwriting. _‘Take care of him for me.’_

The last thing Elijah wanted was for Orlando to come to him. Orlando was everything that Elijah had left behind; fire and warmth and spirit, and the seductive thrill of humanity in all its imperfection. Orlando was mortal, in a way that heated the stolen blood in Elijah’s veins when he thought of it.

It was different with Dominic, but Elijah still had to be careful. Dominic didn’t understand how dangerous vampires could be; he was caught up in the romanticism of first love and shared blood, and closed-mouthed kisses by candlelight. Dominic could be lied to.

Elijah didn’t know when things had changed; when things that were once alive and vibrant started to seem decayed, to taste like ashes and dust. He couldn’t stand to be near Dominic now, to feel his life beating away with his blood.

Everything died. He knew that, logically. Elijah had died. He was still, physically, beyond death. But Elijah would not be touched by death. He would not surrender to it, and he refused to let it conquer him.

He still fed, of course, but it wasn’t the same anymore. Elijah killed, and his victims were no longer real to him. He killed, and he couldn’t even feel it.

Orlando hadn’t come yet. That, and the fact that it would take him at least several days to travel from Viggo’s chateau to the border province, gave Elijah some time. He couldn’t allow Orlando to get too close, obviously; there was no return to bloodstained kisses and laughter in front of the fireplace. Some things were meant to be left in the past.

He could, however, push Orlando at Dominic. That would serve both of them well. Dominic had gotten quiet lately. Not suspicious, but unsettled. He knew something was wrong as well, he just didn’t know what. Orlando would distract him, until Elijah had decided what to do.

For now, though, he had another decision to make. Viggo would undoubtedly strike back at Olivia; how could he not, with Orlando’s blood-debt on his hands, and after such an aggressive move? Olivia was testing him, to see whether Viggo could still hold onto his territory.

Viggo would strike.

The only real question was whether Elijah would, as well.

 

* * * * *

 

Orlando appeared before Elijah had reached a decision, but he was more prepared than he had been scant days earlier, with Viggo’s letter fresh in his hand and a dozen barely-conceived plans swirling in his head. Dominic knew Orlando was coming, knew why and when and what had happened before to make this such an important visit. The only thing Dominic didn’t know was what Elijah was planning, and that was because Elijah didn’t know yet, either.

Orlando arrived with the usual amount of human drama and chaos; cloak fraying and mud-splattered, shivering from the cold, and three times more gaunt and pale than Elijah remembered. _He hasn’t recovered,_ Elijah realized, watching Orlando stand shaking in the foyer, looking up at Elijah on the stairs. It had never occurred to Elijah that Orlando would leave the safety of Viggo’s demesne before he was fully healed.

And yet here he was, obviously suffering from blood loss, walking straight into a vampire’s den with the complete trust of a child. Trusting that Elijah would protect him. Trust that Elijah’s instincts weren’t screaming that Orlando would make an easy meal. Orlando was weakened, and some of the spark had disappeared from his eyes. It would almost be an act of pity to extinguish what remained.

“Orlando,” someone said; not Elijah, and a moment later Dominic came into view from the hall, rushing to the door with a blanket. Orlando jerked out of his silent staring, shook his head as if emerging from a dream. Elijah descended the stairs and tried not to remember what it had been like before.

Dominic looked up when Elijah was within a few feet of them, quick and sharp, and Elijah saw the glimmer of something unexpected in his eyes. Mistrust, or uncertainty. Something. Something that hadn’t been there before Orlando came, with the scent of death clinging to him like a second skin.

Sometimes Elijah forgot that Dominic had instincts, too.

“Elijah,” Orlando said, and his voice was weaker too, not only in strength but in confidence. Not for the first time, Elijah felt a glimmer of hatred for Olivia, for her careless destruction. Elijah killed, but he didn’t maim and weaken. He was merciful. Olivia took the light but not the husk, and laughed when she did it.

“Orlando,” Elijah returned the greeting calmly, as if he wasn’t judging how much blood Orlando would need to survive. “Welcome to the border.”

Orlando didn’t even flinch at the reminder that he had never visited here, that all ties had been cut when Elijah left. He still had that strength, that defiance. And Elijah didn’t blame him for never coming here before. There had never been a need.

“Thank you.” Orlando inclined his head, the greeting of a peasant to a nobleman. Of a mortal to a vampire. “I ask for sanctuary.”

So it was out in the open, then, and nothing either of them could do would disguise the knowledge. Orlando was here as a refugee, not as a guest, and by taking him on Elijah took on the risk of protecting him. The way Viggo had taken on Elijah, a few years ago. Only Viggo had been at the height of his power then, accepting a newly-made orphan.

Not a barely-hatched fledgling not even established in his own territory yet, harboring the victim of a burgeoning blood-feud. Elijah wondered if Orlando even knew what he was asking.

Then he saw the way Orlando held himself, carefully aloof with his shoulders bowed. And Dominic was still at arm’s length, clutching the blanket and waiting for a signal. Orlando hadn’t accepted an embrace, hadn’t taken off his soiled cloak.

Orlando knew.

“Of course,” Elijah agreed, after the pause had stretched between them, too long for comfort. “You may stay as long as you wish, until you are ready to return.”

“I’m not going back,” Orlando stated firmly, and Elijah was almost surprised at the way his chin cocked, grim and braced against argument. The skin around his eyes was tight, haunted. Elijah didn’t know when Viggo had suddenly become the enemy, and Elijah the ally.

“Yes, you will.” Elijah’s tone was not soothing, but assured. He knew Orlando, and he knew Viggo. Orlando wouldn’t stay for long.

“I won’t,” Orlando reinforced, and the vehemence underlying his words seemed out of place for someone so exhausted. There was fear beneath it, though, a scent that Elijah picked up like a tracking wolfhound. “You can’t make me.”

Elijah didn’t say anything.

“Why don’t I show you to a guest room, Orlando,” Dominic offered slowly, and even though some of the tension left the room when he spoke, Elijah didn’t miss the measuring look in his eyes.

“Why don’t you stay with Dominic?” Elijah suggested instead, eyes on Orlando but aware of Dominic in his peripheral vision, of Dominic’s startled stare. “I’ll just be down the hall.”

Both of them wisely remained silent until the echo of his footsteps had died out on the flagstones, and then he was gone.

 

* * * * *

 

There was another vampire in his mausoleum.

Elijah knew the moment he stepped onto the grounds, felt the presence of a rival in his territory but couldn’t identify the source. It wasn’t Viggo, which was the biggest surprise; if anything, Elijah would have expected Viggo to follow Orlando when he fled. But it wasn’t. And just as well, that Viggo stay in his chateau for now, ready for any move Olivia might make.

It wasn’t Olivia either, but Elijah didn’t drop his guard even with that assurance. Olivia could have friends, and any one of them could be here now, out for Orlando’s blood and willing to go through Elijah to get it.

In truth, Elijah couldn’t figure out why Orlando was still alive. It only took a moment to kill, and Olivia must have had both the time and the skill. She had left Orlando alive, and it was probably no accident that Orlando had come to Elijah immediately after the attack. Viggo had known where Orlando would run to. It followed that Olivia would, as well.

An owl hooted from the nearby trees; Elijah used the sound to cover his movement as he pulled back against the cold stone, into the shadows of the crypt untouched by moonlight.

“Come out, little one, I won’t hurt you,” came a voice from the far side of the mausoleum, patient and almost bored. Elijah held still for another spatter of seconds before emerging into the light, and as soon as he did he heard the strike-hiss of a match, the flare of a candle wick into flame.

The vampire was older than Elijah had expected, with wrinkles of good-natured amusement around his mouth, as well as the stern lines carved by command and order. He was almost smiling now, watching Elijah walk cautiously towards him, and set the taper into a clay jar beside him as soon as Elijah was within a few feet of him, clasping his hands together as if receiving a guest.

“Elijah,” the stranger said benevolently, with a twinkle in his eye that made Elijah stop just out of reach, hands curled loosely at his sides. “I was thinking it was time we met.”

“You have the advantage of me,” Elijah replied carefully, keeping his eyes open for movement. Just because Elijah could only sense one vampire didn’t necessarily mean that there weren’t more. “I’m afraid I don’t know your name, sir.”

“Call me Ian,” the older vampire introduced himself. He stood with the grace and gravity of one used to casual command, accustomed to being recognized as nobility. “I come as a friend.”

“Friend,” Elijah echoed slowly, forcing himself not to take a step back.

“Indeed.” Ian picked up the candle beside him, but although Elijah braced himself for an attack, it didn’t come. Ian made a circle of the room instead, deliberate and almost ceremonial, lighting each of the candles that waited, unused and thick with dust, in the alcoves set around the perimeter of the room.

Elijah watched as each candle was lit, as the room grew gradually brighter until Ian’s face was no longer a mask of exaggerated shadows and they could see each other clearly, in the center of a ring of fire. If a ritual challenge was being issued, Elijah didn’t know the rights or rules. He waited, suspicious and on guard, until Ian returned to his seat on the steps to the stone bier.

“Tell me,” Ian invited idly, when his circle was complete and they faced each other once more, this time in the light of flickering candles, “why I should involve myself in your blood feud.”

“It isn’t my blood feud,” Elijah replied, and the response was reflexive even when the thought was not.

“It will be,” Ian countered. He didn’t act as if Elijah’s answer had upset him at all, or even made an impact. One graceful finger trailed through the dust clinging to the stone steps. “It’s only a matter of time, we both know that.”

“I have done nothing,” Elijah stated, putting a challenge in his voice. If he was on trial for something, let them come out in the open about it. He would not hide from foes.

“Nothing?” Ian chuckled, leaning back slightly on his seat, which from Elijah’s position looked eerily like a throne. “My dear boy, you don’t have to do anything. We know where your alliances lie. And the fact that you have taken in Viggo’s human companion, so soon after the first strike?” He shook his head mockingly. “I would not call that nothing.”

“Orlando is a friend,” Elijah said, and wondered at the choice of words as soon as they left his mouth. He was painfully aware of the open doorway to the mausoleum at his back, where he couldn’t keep watch.

“A friend?” Ian snorted, a surprisingly undignified gesture for someone whose every move seemed calculated and majestic. “You should take better care when choosing friends.”

“Tell me why I should choose you,” Elijah challenged, and prepared himself for an attack towards which Ian made no move. Instead, he simply sat and watched Elijah, as if assessing what possible use he could be to whatever secret end Ian had in mind.

“I have my own grudges against Olivia,” Ian said finally, almost drawling the words as his fingers traced idly in the dust. “And my own motives, as well, but you need not be concerned with those.”

Elijah stood still for a long moment, considering the unspoken offer and the possible benefits and consequences of accepting an immortal accomplice. “If I did what you are suggesting,” he said finally, picking his words as carefully as late-summer grapes, “What would there be in it for me?”

Ian barked out a laugh, but it sounded more condescending than amused. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought it through already. Olivia’s territory isn’t nearly as rich as Viggo’s, but it certainly holds better prospects than a border province. And you hold far more ambition than you’re willing to let on.”

Elijah didn’t allow his expression to give away his thoughts; remained implacable and distant. “What makes you think I would strike at Olivia?” he asked calmly. “As you said, Viggo’s is the richer demesne.”

Ian went very still, his glittering eyes considering Elijah shrewdly. “Would you take the bigger prize, then?” he queried thoughtfully. “Join forces with Olivia?” Again the head shake, dismissive. “She would not tolerate an upstart taking what she has so long coveted.”

“Perhaps not,” Elijah agreed. “Indeed, why join forces with anyone?”

Ian’s eyes hooded. “Indeed,” he echoed quietly. “Why at all?”

They watched each other silently for the stretch of long minutes, and then Ian stood. “I think,” he said agreeably, “that I have learned what I came here to find out.”

Elijah blinked; the candles went out in a gust of wind blowing cold and sharp through the open doorway. When Elijah could see again, moonlight filtering pale and shadowy into the crypt, Ian was gone.


	2. Strigoi

_Part Two – Dominic_

 

Dominic was in his bedroom when Orlando found him, padding catlike across the floors, bare feet sinking into the plush carpet. Even thin and haunted, Orlando was a temptation. More so when he crossed behind Dominic to stretch out on the bed, tan fingers creeping in sensual increments across the rough-spun sheets.

“Dominic,” Orlando whispered, offering and asking, and Dominic only hesitated for a fraction of a moment, enough to remember that Elijah wanted this, was practically shoving them into bed together.

It almost didn’t matter, with Orlando’s fingers curling urgently around his wrists as their lips met, hasty and sloppy, that Dominic already had a lover. Elijah was gone, and not just physically. Elijah was untouchable.

Right now was not the time to think of that, though. Orlando was pawing at his clothes, begging with his body and soft, pleading whimpers that had Dominic on top of him before he even realized he had moved. Orlando was warm beneath his hands, yielding and encouraging, reciprocating Dominic’s attentions with an enthusiasm that bordered on desperation.

“Easy,” Dominic warned when one of Orlando’s fingernails scratched across the back of his forearm, leaving a thin welt. “Easy,” just like he was gentling a foal; and it _was_ easy until Orlando’s hips bucked off the mattress to grind against his, until the heat Orlando was radiating became too much for Dominic to control.

“Dominic,” Orlando begged, and the last of their clothing was finally on the floor, shoved out of the way to make room for skin against skin and the awkward tangle of limbs as they kissed.

Orlando was hot and needy, a furnace consuming every thought Dominic had, including safety and preparation and the logistics of them in the same bed together. Everything gone except for the taste of Orlando’s skin, and the mewling noises he made when Dominic attached his mouth to Orlando’s nipple and sucked, with Dominic alternating between scraping his teeth over the tightened skin and licking at it with a rough tongue. Orlando squirmed beneath him, and parted his legs for Dominic to slide between, until their hips were cradled and their mouths were fused together with saliva and want.

“Inside of me, Dominic, please, I need you…oh god, yes…” Orlando chanted when they broke apart to come together again, Dominic pressing insistently at the entrance to Orlando’s body, both of them slippery with carelessly spilled oil. Dominic tried to stop the traitorous thought that Elijah had never allowed this, but it was difficult to ignore when he was feeling something he hadn’t felt in years, something intense and overwhelming. He tried harder to ignore the fact that Elijah was incapable of returning this intimacy, as difficult as it was with Orlando pressed against him, need and heat in a way that Elijah was only ice and hunger.

“Dominic,” Orlando said again, and then they stopped speaking and started moving, in a way that was both new and old, that started fast and hard and Dominic felt, for a moment, as if there was nowhere to go from where they had begun, but Orlando showed him differently by rolling them together so that Dominic was on his back, by riding Dominic further into his body until they both cried out in release.

He recognized the slip when it happened; when in the moment before his climax, Orlando tipped his head back and bared his throat. And then flinched, realizing what he had done, trying awkwardly to cover his mistake. He pulled back, but there was nowhere to go with them locked together as they were, and the sudden pressure only sent Dominic pulsing after him, stretched tight and tense until it ended for both of them and Orlando came tumbling down onto Dominic’s sweaty chest, shaking.

“Hey,” Dominic said when he could speak again, gasping for air around the knot in his chest and dizzy with euphoria, trying to soothe without knowing the full root of the problem. “It’s all right. You don’t have to be afraid. I’m here.”

“I’m not,” Orlando argued, eyelashes fanned across high cheekbones and sprawled with his head on Dominic’s shoulder, lips buzzing against Dominic’s chest, and Dominic was thrown forcefully back into the dizzying shades of memories by Orlando’s words. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

 

* * *

 

Elijah was in and out for the next few days, which was for the best in Dominic’s opinion. Orlando hadn’t seemed unsettled around Elijah, had in fact run to him rather than to a mortal acquaintance…but Orlando hadn’t been around Elijah for nearly a year. Orlando hadn’t seen the changes, watched Elijah drift further away to become like the marble statues that decorated the garden. Sometimes Dominic barely recognized him. Elijah had become cold, untouchable. Like the snow Dominic had found him in, freezing to death before he ever knew the taste of blood.

Sometimes Dominic wondered if he had made the right decision by taking him out of it.

Dominic still never thought of leaving. Or if he did, the idea was immediately banished, buried beneath a hailstorm of reasons why he never would. Elijah – even cold, impenetrable, and distant – was the center of his life in the border province, and he saw no end to that. And the very few times they were intimate now, when Elijah melted enough to touch him, on a chaise or against a desk or wherever the mood took them, Dominic’s blood still sang.

“Dominic,” Elijah’s voice came from behind him, dark and soft. The knife Dominic was using to chop carrots slipped, nicked the soft skin on the outside of his hand. He cursed quietly and turned, a rebuke almost on his lips; one that died away when he saw Elijah standing quiet and still in the middle of the kitchen.

Elijah’s eyes were unreadable, turned to midnight blue the way they did sometimes when he was hungry. Or aroused. With a vampire, the two were often one and the same. It was yet another lesson that Dominic had needed to learn.

“You don’t have to do that, you know,” Elijah pointed out calmly. “I did hire someone to cook and clean.”

“I don’t mind,” Dominic answered blankly, distracted by Elijah’s stillness, his complete focus on something out of Dominic’s knowing. “I like cooking.”

Elijah smiled, barely noticeable but there; just the tiniest curve to his lips. His skin was pale, almost faded to ivory. He hadn’t fed, Dominic thought absently. And he would need to, soon.

“Going to hunt?” he asked as soon as the thought came into his mind, and immediately cursed himself for saying it aloud. Elijah’s eyes flashed and then dimmed, hiding any trace of what he was thinking, but Dominic knew that he hated to be reminded of feeding. He did it as little as possible, starving himself for days before hunting, and then it was done with as much secrecy as he could muster.

Dominic had made the mistake of following him only once, and neither of them had forgiven him for that night, when Elijah had killed with barely enough strength left to do so, and Dominic had watched from across a vacant farmyard, in horror of both the dying man and the life it brought back to the vampire that Dominic had given his own life to. They never talked about it after that; Dominic assumed he was simply not supposed to know.

Only Dominic forgot, sometimes, and then Elijah would go still and deny it, and refuse to hunt until his skin went cold and white and his strength began to wane. It had happened a lot, their first few weeks together. Dominic hadn’t recognized, from hearing stories in the town, from watching Viggo and Orlando together, all that being the companion to an immortal entailed. Not until Elijah.

“No,” Elijah replied, just as Dominic knew that he would. His hands twitched once, restlessly, at his sides. They stared at each other for a few silent moments, and then Elijah half-turned, breaking eye contact and throwing his face into profile against the backdrop of the kitchen walls, his skin nearly blending in against them. Dominic had painted them off-white after a month, a few shades darker than eggshells. Elijah had never challenged him, or let on that he knew why Dominic had done it. But when Elijah’s skin turned paler than paint on stone, Dominic knew that he needed to be careful.

“I’m going away for a little while,” Elijah said finally, and the reflexive thought – _take me with you_ – died before it ever touched Dominic’s lips. They had been inseparable once. Now, they were alone even when together. And Elijah was leaving.

“When are you coming back?” Dominic asked, and he suddenly felt as cold as Elijah. He didn’t ask the question ‘ _are_ you coming back’, because it would have been too easy for Elijah to say ‘no.’

“I’m not sure,” Elijah answered, and before Dominic realized what he was doing, he was across the room, hovering only inches away and losing himself in Elijah’s immortal, unchanging eyes.

 _Don’t go_ , Dominic thought, and “Elijah,” was what came out, nowhere near enough to keep them together. Elijah’s eyes glazed slightly, unfocusing as he glanced away and down, and only then did Dominic feel the sticky warmth of something sliding slowly over his wrist.

There was a trickle of blood running down the side of Dominic’s hand where the knife had cut him, and Elijah wrapped chill, bone-white fingers around Dominic’s warm wrist; lifted it slowly to his mouth.

It would be too easy to give in, but Dominic knew better. Knew how much of Elijah was indiscriminate hunger right now; knew how Orlando woke from nightmares drenched in sweat, and what hunted him in his dreams.

“Elijah,” Dominic said clearly, hiding the way his voice threatened to shake, “no.”

Elijah snapped out of his trance, looked into Dominic’s eyes. Then he whirled and swept out of the room.

By the time Dominic could breathe again, the doors to the front hall of the mansion had already slammed shut.

* * *

“Don’t put the light out,” Orlando whispered into Dominic’s ear, and Dominic let his arm fall back onto the bed, away from the lamp wavering unsteadily on the table beside them.

“It’ll go out soon anyway,” Dominic told him, but without argument, letting his fingers weave into Orlando’s dark curls. “It needs fuel.”

“Let it burn,” Orlando said, pulling Dominic closer, and Dominic let it go, forgot his reply in Orlando’s lips, his mouth opening and welcoming Dominic’s tongue inside. _Eyes open, lips closed_ was the rule, always the rule, and Dominic forgot it now, marveling at how he’d nearly forgotten to kiss without being wary of pointed canines and blood-hunger, to feast on someone’s mouth as if it contained some secret vital to his existence.

Orlando hadn’t, Dominic knew. Orlando had lovers, mortal and immortal, but he was tied much more strongly than Dominic for all of that. Orlando belonged to a vampire, heart and soul, and not even the heat of his body, legs parting to encourage further contact, could make Dominic forget that entirely.

“Elijah’s gone,” Dominic said between open-mouthed kisses, when they broke apart for snatches of breath and clarity. “I don’t know where.”

Orlando tensed beneath him briefly, but the muscles smoothed beneath his fingertips in the next heartbeat, so quickly that Dominic wondered if he had imagined it. “He’s gone to Viggo,” Orlando answered quietly, turning his head to hide it in the curve of Dominic’s arm and dropping light kisses up the inside of his arm. And then Dominic knew that he hadn’t imagined it at all, that Orlando was hiding his own secrets, and that Dominic would never be able to get far enough under his skin to find them all out.

He tried anyway; spent the better part of two hours teasing and arousing, pleasuring Orlando until he begged for release and then gave him just enough to hold on with, until finally the wave crested over both of them and Dominic gave in, pushed between Orlando’s shaking legs and worked him to an exhausted climax.

He ignored the thinking part of his mind, the part that still wondered after Elijah and whether Orlando would ever really recover, and how Viggo was feeling, alone in his chateau, miles and miles away. He gave everything over to physical pleasure, and pretended that for the time being, it would make everything all right again.

It lasted until the climax ebbed, until his breathing evened out and his heartbeat slowed back to normal, and then it crept back in. He knew Orlando was thinking as well, could feel the distance between them just like he could feel it with Elijah, cutting him off in painful isolation.

He couldn’t do anything to help Orlando. Dominic knew what Orlando was looking for, even if Orlando himself did not.

Safety. Protection.

Only Elijah was no longer safe. And even knowing that, Dominic couldn’t do anything to help himself, either. Sometimes the sheer inevitability of their changing relationship made him want so close his eyes and scream. Elijah would probably stand and watch him do it, and not understand why. Or worse; understand, and not care.

A slight change in Orlando’s breathing brought Dominic back to the present, to awareness of drying sweat and cooling bodies twined together, and the flicker of Orlando’s lashes against Dominic’s skin when he blinked.

“It’s not love, though, is it?” Orlando asked quietly, cheek on Dominic’s chest, breathing in time with him.

Dominic sighed. “No, it’s not.” He ran a hand lightly over Orlando’s back, needing the reassurance of contact. “But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t something.”

Orlando’s eyes closed slowly, lashes fanned across his skin. Dominic pulled him closer, a fraction of an inch, and lay awake as the lamp spat and guttered out. He told himself, not for the first time, that this would never last. He couldn’t spend months in Orlando’s arms, watching Elijah grow more distant with every passing day. And he couldn’t turn Orlando away when he needed Dominic so desperately, when both of them knew that Elijah didn’t care whether they slept together or apart. He couldn’t pretend any longer that nothing was wrong.

Something had to change.


	3. Vircolac

_Part Three – Elijah_

 

The chateau was dark when Elijah arrived, cloaked and hidden from the sliver of moon, silhouetted against the night sky exactly the way he remembered. There was no one at the door; Elijah let himself in silently and crept along the shadowed hallway to the study, where he knew Viggo would most likely be.

And he was, although not as Elijah expected to find him. Viggo was reclined on the couch in front of the fireplace, watching the coals burn out into ashes; Elijah could see the reflection of the embers in his eyes. His clothing was as immaculate as ever, his hair brushed into glossy waves. Elijah took a moment before saying softly, “Viggo.”

“I didn’t expect you to come,” Viggo answered without evident astonishment, turning from the fire to regard Elijah. “But I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.” He gestured with an elegant hand to the armchair by the fire, where he usually sat, reigning over the room and all in it. Elijah was struck by the contrast, the way things were the same and at the same time so different, so wrong. “Please, come in.”

Elijah didn’t move immediately; watched from the doorway and let dimmed memories cloud his mind. “He’ll come back to you,” Elijah said without thinking, remembering Orlando’s skin turned bronze by the roaring fire, hot and firm against Elijah’s hands. It felt like an illicit thought, one that he shouldn’t be having with Viggo right here in front of him. But it was there, and likely in both of their minds, and Elijah didn’t bother to lie to Viggo.

“He might,” Viggo answered without rebuke. “He might not.” His eyes took Elijah in, measuring him in a way that Elijah couldn’t begin to fathom. “Forgiveness is one thing. Fear is quite another, and Orlando is human.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Elijah protested immediately.

“It was a betrayal,” Viggo countered softly. “As surely as if I had drained him myself.” His eyes flicked back to the glowing embers, and Elijah saw the streaks of orange reflected in his pupils, thin lines of fire breaking into threads and finally crumbling into dull ashes.

Elijah crossed to the armchair while Viggo continued to watch; settled himself in it and tried to ignore how wrong it felt to be there. “How did it happen?” he asked, because he didn’t know nearly enough. Not enough to decide one way or the other, and not enough to become involved. Yet.

“Olivia,” Viggo said, voice smoothed into a purr, almost like a lover’s caress but for the deadly menace woven through the tone.

“How?” Elijah repeated. “Why Orlando?” _Why bother?_ is what he wanted to say, but he knew Viggo, knew better than to seek an answer for that question. And remembered once when he might have cared as much as this, to grieve for a lost mortal who wasn’t even dead.

“She did it to send a deliberate message to me,” Viggo said, with dying fire in his eyes and ice in his voice. “I wasn’t even there. I came back from hunting and found him at the bottom of the staircase.” Viggo’s eyes went shadowy and distant, and Elijah tried to imagine how he would feel if he came back and found Orlando like that on the floor of his mansion. Dominic. Both.

“What about John?” Elijah asked, because Viggo never left Orlando alone, not completely. Before, there had been Elijah, and he was sure there had been others before him. But John had been there even when Elijah wasn’t. Someone was always watching.

The look in Viggo’s eyes sharpened; crystallized. “John is dead.”

Elijah sucked in his breath, waited for more and knew already that it wouldn’t come. It had been that close, then. She could have killed Orlando, just to show that she was able to. Destroyed Viggo’s life because it was built around mortals, and mortals were so very easy to break…

“You could turn him,” Elijah suggested, because it had to be said. Because even though the thought left him cold, it was still a choice. He didn’t want to think about Orlando’s skin pale and cold, didn’t want to see those animated features smoothed into porcelain perfection. But Orlando was halfway there already, emptied and frozen when he showed up on Elijah’s doorstep.

“I would never make Orlando an immortal,” Viggo stated, and Elijah understood without needing to hear it. “It would kill him.”

It would kill his body, Elijah thought, but it would also kill his soul. His spirit. Orlando was the epitome of mortality, that was why Viggo was so enraptured with him. For the flame that had yet to be extinguished. For the hot blood he so willingly offered up to their teeth, laughing as they took it. Taking that essence would leave nothing but a hollow shell. They both knew it, so the words went unsaid; died along with the fire.  
Elijah made his decision.

“Tell me what I must do,” he commanded softly, and held Viggo’s eyes in open challenge. “And it will be done.”

 

* * *

 

“Do you know how to kill a vampire?” Viggo asked, and Elijah shook his head, following Viggo on paths of moonlight through the city and into the woods, where the only trails came from the light shadowed through the trees, filtered into static patterns of black on white.

“You do it the way you would kill a mortal,” Viggo explained, his voice ringing back as he taught Elijah to blend into shadows even more skillfully than before, how to whisper into stillness without a thought. _This is the way the old ones do it,_ Viggo had said, snapping a branch in his hand to show Elijah the sound of dry wood. _This is why we can’t catch them._

Elijah thought of Ian, and the way even the fire danced at his command. And wondered what power there was to come, for an immortal who killed another of their kind. “Mortals live,” Elijah pointed out calmly. “How do you kill the dead?”

It was not the first time he had spoken the word aloud, but it still rang oddly from his tongue, misshapen and harsh. Death and the dead had no place in his world. He was not of them.

“You kill the life in them,” Viggo’s voice floated back, and Elijah stilled, sank back into shadows, waited for the words to tell him where Viggo had gone. “You take the blood, and they have nothing left of the living.”

Elijah thought of Olivia’s head wrenched back, of her milk-pale skin slowly fading to transparency and turning to ice under his lips. “What if they strike first?” he asked, turning to where he thought he had heard the sound, before the forest’s echo made him doubt.

“Then you’re dead,” Viggo said calmly from behind him, and Elijah whirled, putting three steps between them before he took his next breath.

“I’m already dead,” Elijah answered, standing frozen, a statue of night-forest black and white.

“Perhaps,” Viggo commented, taking a step back and vanishing into shadow. “But if you were truly beyond death, you wouldn’t need to fear.”

“I don’t fear,” Elijah protested coolly, but his skin tingled, the hairs on his arms prickled by more than the chill of the night air.

“You do, and wisely.” Viggo emerged from the embrace of a cleft pine, three paces from where Elijah had seen him disappear. “Let me ask you a question, now.”

Elijah waited, considering the lesson and the teacher’s watchful gaze. “Yes?”

Viggo moved with the darkness, and the shadows followed him across the clearing to where Elijah stood, pooled in moonlight. “What if you both strike?”

Elijah remained frozen, felt the impossible brush of Viggo’s lips against the side of his neck as he stood, unmoving and wary. Viggo’s breath fanned cold across his skin, and Elijah closed his eyes to concentrate on the sensation, imagining the sharp prick of Viggo’s teeth if they sank into his flesh. He turned his head slightly, close enough that his hair brushed against Viggo’s, and saw the pale throat of another vampire bared for his teeth.

“A circuit,” he breathed, and Viggo’s lips moved in a smile against his skin. Elijah shivered, and heard Viggo’s low laugh in the rumble of his chest, the vibrations in his throat transmitting to Elijah’s lips as he closed the fraction of distance between them.

“Just so.” Viggo raised his head, took a step away, and Elijah shook himself out of reverie. “And the weakest is the one who dies.”

“How do you know who is the weaker?” Elijah asked, watching Viggo cloak himself in moonlight once again and shake off the darkness like water. His own body drifted in and out of light as the clouds passed above the trees, covering the moon, and he made no move to hide.

Viggo’s teeth flashed white in a grim smile. “You don’t, until the circuit is completed.” His voice was gravel against stone, scraping and inevitable. “And then they die.”

Elijah stared for a long moment, seeing Olivia’s long, red-painted nails in his mind, the black jewels that ringed her throat. “She can be defeated,” he said finally. “She can be killed.”

“Yes,” Viggo answered evenly, holding Elijah’s eyes. “She can.”

 

* * *

 

“She’s not here,” Elijah said, as soon as he crossed the flagstones of Olivia’s cathedral, and his voice rang in the silence of the domed narthex, echoing off of bare stone walls. Viggo stopped just behind him, waiting.

“No,” another voice announced, paper-dry like the rustle of old leaves, “she isn’t.” Ian walked through the open doorway to meet them, his hands outspread to show that they held nothing, his eyes twinkling as they held Elijah’s. “But you know where she is.”

Elijah’s mind overturned the possibilities one by one, discarding suggestions as soon as they appeared. Only one thought held the ring of truth, and that one didn’t make sense. “She knew we were coming,” he stated, still thinking through the twists and turns of the game.

Ian nodded, half-smiling. “She did.”

Viggo moved beside him, only a rustle of fabric; Elijah held out a hand for silence, his mind furiously tracing their steps. “There was no one to warn her,” he said slowly, gaze locked with Ian’s, “except for you.”

This time the smile grew, accompanied by a brief nod of acknowledgement. “Right again.”

“Why?” Elijah asked, dizzy with possibility and motive: trying to see the board rather than the pieces, to know who had moved before them and why. “What does it accomplish?”

Ian’s head tilted, his eyes narrowed in speculation. “Perhaps,” he replied idly, “because I wished to know who was stronger.”

Elijah’s head snapped up, his nostrils flared under a surge of anger. “This isn’t a game,” he stated icily.

“On the contrary,” Ian countered, taking another step forward, and another, before halting in the center of the narrow room. “That’s exactly what it is. The only question is, do you know what you’re playing for?”

“Where is she?” Viggo ground out from behind Elijah’s shoulder, cold and implacable. Ian’s gaze didn’t shift from Elijah’s as he answered.

“You know.”

_What if she strikes first?_

“The mansion.” The answer to the riddle, the source of his nightmares. He had claimed not to know fear, when in truth he was simply hiding what he was afraid of. Dominic and Orlando, lying in a pool of their own blood…

“Why?” Viggo demanded, and Elijah heard the tightness of grief in his voice, the knowledge that history could be easily repeated.

“Because,” Ian said with a smile, wisdom-wrinkles curving around his lips. “You cannot simply take what is not yours. Not without a fight.”

“She’ll kill them,” Elijah said flatly, chilled at the thought that he had left two mortals unprotected, indefensible, and Olivia had only been waiting for him to give them to her. “And they have no part in this fight.”

“They knew the risks, the same as you did.” Ian’s tone brooked no argument, no room for protest. “And they may yet have a chance.”

Elijah swallowed; unwilling, yet, to hope. “How long?” he asked. “How long ago did she leave?”

Ian smiled again and nodded, the forfeit of proud teacher to a pupil who had learned to ask the right questions. “An hour, no more.”

Elijah was under the archway before he realized that Ian was somehow in front of him, barring their exit. “You set up the game,” Elijah said evenly, his mind counting down seconds with ringing finality. “You moved the pieces. Why stop the players?”

Ian’s smile this time was hard, and just on the edge of cruel. “Because not all of the pieces are needed for this play,” he answered mockingly, and Elijah glanced automatically to Viggo, who stood white-faced and angry on the flagstones beside him.

“I will not leave him,” Viggo argued, and Elijah knew that the protest was not for him.

“You will,” Ian answered without compassion, “Or I stop the game.”

Elijah watched the emotions war on Viggo’s face, saw reckless defiance finally blur into defeat. “Go,” he said, taking a step back and throwing his arm into the air, cloak swirling in a hiss against the stones. Ian stepped to the side, nodding gravely.

Elijah fled.

 

* * *

 

Elijah had never covered this much ground in this little time before, but then there had never been a need. He didn’t stop to kill, to sleep; only to take shelter when needed, to rest before he collapsed. His thoughts were a blur, one that focused around two mortals and a laughing, triumphant vampire.

He was through the gate and into the house almost before he realized he had reached his goal, but not before he sensed the other presence inside, the unwelcome. She’d beaten him here after all.

Olivia didn’t turn when he ran into the main hall, but he knew she was aware of him, as he was of her. Dominic’s eyes met his briefly, but Orlando didn’t look away from Olivia; she had them backed against the door to the guest closet, pressed against the wall, and her fingers trailed lazily through the air, dizzying and hypnotic.

“Only one?” Olivia’s voice drifted back to him, cast carelessly over her shoulder. “How disappointing.” Elijah didn’t move, stayed where he was several steps away until she turned from her hostages. Her bait.

Orlando was trembling, and she seemed to be paying the most attention to him, although Elijah couldn’t tell for certain from this angle; she was merely a cat stalking her prey. Dominic’s jaw was set, and Elijah recognized that look, feared what it could mean.

Elijah started to take a step closer, but froze when Olivia’s hand came up sharply in warning.

“Elijah,” she said softly, without looking back. “You’re late.”

It was done before Elijah could react. Orlando was cast aside, thrown onto the steps, and even as Dominic lunged after him Olivia had caught him to her chest and sunk her teeth into his neck. Dominic yelled, helpless, a sound that Elijah had heard echoed every time he killed.

And then Elijah struck.

Olivia knew before he reached her, had discarded Dominic and whirled to meet the attack, and Elijah’s fingers caught in the string of alabaster pearls around her throat, tangled, jerked and the necklace came loose with the pop of a string and the sound of dozens of pearls cascading onto the tile floor.

He had her at the same moment that she had him, and his body screamed when her teeth broke his skin, screamed and sang, the electric thrill of blood on his tongue countered by the pull of her mouth as she drained him. She took from him, but he took more, and faster, and even her strength could not withstand his fury. Ambition, and hatred, and a fierce, protective love for what she would so easily destroy.

She clawed at him, her nails scraping his throat, his shoulders, his face, but he only held her closer and forced her to yield, to bend to his will. He hadn’t fed, and he was weaker for it, but she was full of blood, and all of it was to be his.

He felt her die, or pass beyond death; felt the moment where she could no longer pull life from him, simply faded until there was nothing more for him to take, and he dropped her uncaring onto the tile.

Dominic was watching him. Orlando was as well, but he didn’t matter. Dominic watched him through slitted eyes, red blood dripping from his throat onto cold white tile, and struggled to sit upright. To push away.

Elijah was hungry.

Olivia was a fire inside him, all of her coldness and disdain and ripe fury, and he needed more, more than she could give. She couldn’t be enough. What he needed was mortal blood. And Dominic was weakened. Bleeding. A candle already snuffed.

It would be an act of pity…

Dominic scrabbled backwards, and Elijah walked slowly, interminably forwards. There were reasons not to do this, reasons that were important, but all he could feel was the intense hunger beneath his skin, and scent the fragility in the mortal body only a few feet away. So easy. So simple, and in a moment it would all be over…

He wanted blood.


	4. Mullo

_Part Four – Dominic_

 

The world felt sluggish. Dominic could see what was going on, Olivia falling and Elijah turning, but it was all happening as if in slow-motion, with understanding coming too late.

Orlando was nearby, somewhere behind him and to the side, but Dominic couldn’t turn that far, couldn’t take his eyes off of Elijah’s. There was nothing recognizable in those eyes, only blank cold and endless thirst. It was Olivia in Elijah’s eyes, and Dominic remembered too well what Olivia’s thirst felt like.

He was bleeding. He had to be, she had torn his skin open when she struck, and there was too much sticky warmth on the pulsing, swollen heat of his throat for the wound to have been sealed. He knew this rule better than all others; never bleed around a vampire.

There was still a part of him, in his heart, that didn’t believe for a moment that Elijah would kill him. But his mind knew better, and his body was still reeling from a vampire’s unwanted bite. Elijah would kill him. He might regret it later, but right now Dominic was prey, and nothing more.

There was something in the closet, there had to be…or Orlando, if they stuck together…Dominic banished that thought as soon as it occurred. Whatever else happened, he had to lead Elijah away from Orlando, had to give Orlando the chance to escape. If he was still conscious, if Olivia hadn’t hurt him too badly to move, Orlando could go for help.

Elijah let him struggle upright, watched him stagger towards the closet and miss, unable to get the door open. There were shaving blades in the bath, if he could only make it that far. Dominic never used to shave, and Elijah didn’t need to, but Elijah liked Dominic’s skin shaven, smooth and naked. Vulnerable. In light of what Dominic was trying to do now, it was almost an irony.

Elijah’s footsteps echoed steadily behind him as he held himself up against the wall, step by uneven step, the noise impossibly loud over the roar in Dominic’s ears and the harsh sound of his own breathing. Even now, Dominic wasn’t thinking of ways to kill. He couldn’t, Elijah was an immortal, and even if he was able to kill, he never would. Not Elijah. But if he could cut, just bring Elijah back to his senses…it might be enough.

The world slipped out from under him, and Dominic knew that he was falling even before his knees buckled, before his vision tilted and his fingers lost purchase on the wall. Strong arms caught him, thin but capable, cradling him against a chest that was far too cold to be alive.

“Elijah,” Dominic whispered, and lips brushed his temple, his cheek, drifted lower as his head was gently pulled to the side, exposing his throat. “No…”

He fought, a brief struggle that didn’t gain him anything but another few seconds at best, and one last glimpse of Elijah’s darkened blue eyes.

“Dominic,” Elijah answered, and then it was too late. Elijah’s head bent, and Dominic swayed as renewed pain flooded through him, pain that he once welcomed as sweet, a taste of immortality. The pull of teeth in his veins was all agony, with none of the joy he usually felt, none of the union, and he wondered if this was what Elijah felt every time he killed, this emptiness.

His vision faded out into grays, then sharply in. His mind raged while his body weakened, and beneath the panic there was still disbelief. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, it wasn’t…

* * *

Elijah was there when he woke up. There was no trace of Dominic’s blood on his lips, no colour to the lifeless skin. No evidence that anything had ever gone wrong.

“I’m sorry.” Elijah’s voice was measured, polite. Dominic wondered if he really felt remorse; if he realized what had just happened.

They were in the parlour; Dominic recognized the sofa he was lying on just before the rest of the room came into focus. Elijah was sitting in a chair a few feet away, as still as if he had been carved from marble. His eyes were on Dominic’s, but not searching. It looked as if he already knew the answer he would find.

“Orlando,” Dominic said, once he had found words to speak and realized that he was still alive. He was light-headed, and weak, but those were just temporary. He hadn’t gone into death, or beyond it. He was still mortal. The relief was so overwhelming that it eclipsed the tiny, contrary surge of disappointment. He didn’t want to die. He never had.

But if it meant that he could keep Elijah and never feel fear again, he might have been willing to pay the price.

“On the chaise,” Elijah said quietly. “He didn’t want to leave you, but he fell asleep a while ago, when you hadn’t woken up.”

“How long?” Dominic struggled to sit, wincing at the reawakened pain in his throat. Elijah’s eyes flickered, his expression offering assistance, but Dominic set his jaw and glared until Elijah subsided and let him do it alone.

Elijah’s voice was still calm, but there was a flash of emotion beneath the words, a suggestion that he was mourning the loss of trust between them the same way Dominic was. “Four hours, or a little more.” Elijah opened his mouth to speak; an explanation, or an apology, something that Dominic didn’t want to hear.

"I need some time."

For a second, Dominic didn’t realize that Elijah’s lips had moved, that he had spoken Dominic’s thoughts out loud. He nodded disjointedly, and was trying to think of something to say in answer when they were interrupted by the sound of a brass knocker beating wood, heavy and urgent.

Dominic jumped, and saw his own momentary terror reflected in Elijah’s eyes before they cleared again, alien and unfeeling. “Stay here,” Elijah commanded, and left before Dominic could summon a protest.

He glanced over to see that Orlando had wakened, and was staring back with wide, frightened eyes. “You’re alive,” Orlando whispered, and Dominic hated that he was still too pale, hated with a passion the way his hands trembled. Olivia had done that, but Elijah had finished it. Elijah had proven that vampires couldn’t be trusted, and now the brightness was gone from Orlando’s eyes.

Too much innocence lost. Dominic was still grieving for the loss of his own. He didn’t have the strength left to mourn Orlando’s.

“I’m going out there,” Dominic said, rising unsteadily from the sofa, because he couldn’t just sit here and not know, he couldn’t wait for something to kill Elijah or for Elijah to kill him, he couldn’t just let it happen. Orlando stood belatedly, offering a hand in case Dominic needed it, but by the time Dominic’s head had stopped swimming and he looked up towards the door, they already had company.

“Viggo,” Orlando said in stunned surprise. He stood, frozen, on the other side of the room, and for a moment they all stared; Orlando and Dominic, Viggo with Elijah at his side. Dominic knew that Orlando didn’t see anyone else, though, and Viggo’s eyes were fixed. For what felt like the first time, Dominic felt jealousy bite deep. He envied the way they flowed into each other, even across the length of a room. They belonged together, in a way that he and Elijah never would.

“Beloved,” Viggo said simply, and Orlando melted across the room into his arms. Dominic felt something inside of him tug loose and drift away, his gaze turning from Orlando and Viggo to Elijah, still standing in the doorway, cold and untouchable. And he knew that if Elijah asked, he would stay. Even if it destroyed both of them.

There were demons in Elijah’s eyes now, but they weren’t Dominic’s to fight, and they both knew it. “Let me go,” he begged, so quiet that only Elijah could hear. “Please.” In his mind’s eye he could see them both, Elijah’s pale, pale face in the envious moonlight, and the final eclipse that brought them into shadow. But he couldn’t free himself of this.

“I need some time,” Elijah repeated softly, and with the words came the unspoken oath that Dominic needed so badly to hear, the vow that this was only a farewell. It wasn’t goodbye.

“I’ll be waiting,” Dominic promised, and Elijah nodded. He glanced back at Orlando and Viggo, still locked in an embrace, foreheads pressed together in silent communion, and then he turned and walked away. And for the first time in too long, Dominic could breathe again.


End file.
